Chapter 21 — Exercises
Work these with a calculator and a pen. Items marked † have worked solutions in the answers appendix; the rest are yours to defend. Where a problem gives you figures, every one of them computes — if your answer doesn't foot, find the arithmetic before you find the excuse.
Unless a problem says otherwise, use Bellwether's frozen figures: 68 seats, 31 people, year-one revenue \$1,550,000** (72% food / 28% beverage), labor **\$500,000 (32.3%), blended cost of goods 27.8%, roughly 36,140 covers a year, and Chapter 17's per-position separation costs as allocated in §21.7 (sous \$6,000 · line cook \$2,850 · bartender \$2,000 · prep \$1,500 · server \$1,000 · host \$910 · busser \$800 · dishwasher \$700).
Recall and definition
1. State the operational definition of restaurant culture used in this chapter, and explain in two sentences why defining it that way makes it a management responsibility rather than a personality trait.
2. Name the four documents in the culture audit (§21.1) and, for each one, write the single question you would ask of it.
3. List the three elements of the brigade system this chapter says are worth keeping and the four assumptions it says should be buried. For each of the three you keep, state the operational problem it solves.
4. † The World Health Organization's ICD-11 describes burn-out along three dimensions. Name them, and explain why the third one is the hardest for a manager to observe directly.
5. Distinguish an exit interview from a stay interview on four axes: who is interviewed, when, what it can tell you, and what it can change.
6. What is the difference between a conflict and a conduct complaint, and what must never happen to the second one?
7. Define psychological safety without using the words "comfortable," "nice," or "safe space." Then state its single operational test.
8. List the five schedule diseases from Figure 21.4. Beside each, write the fix in one line.
Applied reasoning
9. † A restaurant's chalkboard says We take care of each other. Its schedule goes up Thursday afternoon for a week starting Monday. Explain the mechanism by which the second fact structurally forces employees to treat this restaurant as a backup employer, and describe what the owner will conclude instead.
10. Your best cook and your weakest cook were both eight minutes late this month. You wrote up one of them. A third cook, who saw both, asks you about it. Write down what your policy actually is — not what you would say, what it is — in one sentence.
11. A manager tells you: "I don't do pre-shift on Tuesdays, there's no point, we do thirty-one covers." Give the strongest version of their argument, then rebut it in terms of what pre-shift is for.
12. † An operator's labor report has been exactly on target for eight consecutive weeks. In week nine the sous chef resigns. Explain, mechanically, how the report could be right and the operation still be failing, and name the report that would have caught it.
13. Rank these three by how early they appear as a burnout signal in a strong performer, and justify the ranking: (a) the first callout in eleven months, (b) they stop volunteering, (c) small errors in work they have always done correctly.
14. A server tells the host stand the kitchen is "slammed and being difficult." The sous tells you the floor "seated four tables in six minutes and won't stop touching the window." Both are accurate. Identify the undefined decision right underneath the argument and write the rule that settles it.
15. † Explain why a wage increase alone buys roughly a quarter of retention, and what has to be attached to it for it to buy more. Use §21.7's ladder as your example.
16. Your chef says a written conduct standard will "kill the energy" of the line. Answer them using only prime-cost arguments — no moral argument at all. Then say whether you think the moral argument should also be made, and why.
Cost this
17. † Bellwether adds a second pre-shift for the weekend brunch crew: 8 people, 8 minutes, at a blended fully loaded rate of \$16.50 an hour, across 2 brunch services a week, 52 weeks. Compute the annual cost. Then express it as a cost per brunch cover, given 110 brunch covers per service.
18. A 120-seat restaurant runs a 12-minute pre-shift with 18 people on the clock at a blended \$18.25 an hour, six services a week, 50 weeks a year. Compute the annual cost, and the cost per cover if the restaurant does 62,000 covers a year.
19. † Family meal at Bellwether is costed at \$1.00 of incremental food cost per person-meal, 14 person-meals per service, 7 services a week, 52 weeks. Compute (a) the annual cost, (b) that cost as a percentage of Bellwether's food sales, and (c) how many line-cook separations it would have to prevent to pay for itself.
20. An operator wants to move family meal from "whatever's left" to a real meal, which they estimate raises the incremental cost from \$0.40 to \$1.25 per person-meal. Same volumes as exercise 19. Compute the annual increase, and state what you would need to observe over the next two quarters to decide whether it was worth it.
21. † A sous chef separation costs \$6,000 directly. During the ten weeks the chef-owner covers the line, food cost drifts 1.2 points. Bellwether's food sales are \$1,116,000 a year. Compute the drift cost for that ten-week period (use 10/52 of the year) and the total cost of the departure.
22. A restaurant runs 41% annual turnover on a 24-person roster, with this mix of separations: 1 sous, 2 line cooks, 1 bartender, 3 servers, 1 host, 1 busser, 1 dishwasher. Using this chapter's per-position costs, compute the total, the number of separations, the turnover rate, and the cost per cover on 28,000 covers.
Price this lever
23. † Price the 14-day schedule for a restaurant larger than Bellwether: assume you cannot claw back 7 hourly shift-hours a week, at a fully loaded \$20.50 an hour, 52 weeks. Then state the minimum number of server separations (at \$1,000 each) it must prevent to break even, and the minimum number of line cook separations (at \$2,850 each).
24. Design a three-step wage ladder for a bartender position. Specify the test at each step (not the tenure), the differential, and the annual cost at full run-rate if 4 bartenders reach step 2 at +\$1.00/hour and 2 of those reach step 3 at +\$2.00/hour total, each working 1,300 hours, with a 12% payroll burden.
25. † An operator proposes a \$45-per-head holiday party for 31 staff and a \$100 monthly "employee of the month" award, and asks whether that is a reasonable retention budget. Compute the annual cost of both. Then compare it against the retention bundle in §21.7 and write a three-sentence recommendation.
26. Bellwether's callout rotation pays a \$25 premium per called-in shift, capped at 3 per person per month. In year one, 25 callout shifts are paid. Compute the annual cost. Then compute how many sous-chef separations it must prevent — using the \$8,790 all-in figure from §21.4 — to pay for itself, and comment on whether that is a reasonable expectation.
Build this schedule
27. † Below is one week of a sous chef's actual clock data. Diagnose it against the five schedule diseases, then rewrite the week to eliminate every disease you can without reducing total coverage hours by more than 5%.
Mon OFF
Tue 1:00p – 11:30p Wed 10:00a – 11:00p
Thu 1:00p – 11:30p Fri 9:00a – 12:30a
Sat 8:00a – 11:30p Sun 9:00a – 4:00p
28. Build a two-week posted schedule for four line cooks covering 5 dinner services and 2 brunches, in which (a) every cook gets two consecutive days off in each week, (b) no cook works a turnaround shorter than 10 hours, and (c) at least 60% of each cook's days off are the same in both weeks. State what you had to give up, in hours, to satisfy all three.
29. † Your posted schedule goes up 14 days out. On day 9, a cook asks to swap a Saturday with another cook. The swap would put the second cook at 44 hours that week. State your decision, the rule it comes from, and where that rule lives on the decision-rights map.
Read this and find the leak
30. † A restaurant's year-one figures, all constructed:
Revenue $2,400,000
Headcount 47
Separations, year one 61
Labor, all-in $816,000 (34.0%)
Food cost 32.8% (target 29.5%)
Pre-shift held "when we have something to say"
Schedule posted Thursday, for Monday
Salaried staff hours tracked? no
Written promotion path? no
Exit interviews conducted? 1 of 61
Compute the turnover rate. Estimate the turnover cost using this chapter's per-position figures and a defensible mix you construct and state. Then identify the three items on this list you would fix first, in order, and say what each one costs.
31. The same restaurant's owner says the food-cost problem and the turnover problem are separate issues and should be worked separately. Write the argument that they are the same issue, and name the specific mechanisms by which one produces the other.
32. † A comp report shows total comps of 0.6% of sales — well inside the target — but 84% of them were issued by one of four managers. What are the three possible explanations, and what would you look at to distinguish them? Which one is a culture finding?
Write this
33. Write the two-page conduct standard for a kitchen. It must fit on two pages, name specific behaviors rather than values, state what happens the first time and the second time, and include the short list of conduct for which progressive discipline does not apply.
34. † Rewrite this write-up so a stranger reading it a year from now could tell what happened:
"Server has an attitude problem and doesn't take feedback. We've talked about this before. Needs to improve or we'll have to make a change."
You may invent the specifics — but every element required by Figure 21.9 must be present.
35. Write the six questions on Bellwether's exit-interview form. Each one must be answerable by someone who has already quit, has nothing to gain, and may want a reference from you. Then write the one question you would ask last, after the form is finished and the pen is down.
36. A long-tenured cook has just told you, at 10:15 p.m., that they are burning out and are thinking about leaving. Write what you say in the next ninety seconds, and then write the three things you do before the end of the week. Do not promise anything you have not priced.
Judgment and ethics
37. Your highest-producing server has, twice, spoken to the host in a way you would not accept from anyone else. Both times you were busy. They generate roughly \$180,000 of annual sales in their section. Write down what you do, what it might cost you, and what it costs you not to.
38. † A cook tells you, privately, that they are uncomfortable with how another employee talks to them. They ask you not to do anything about it because they do not want trouble. State what you may and may not agree to, why "I'll keep it between us" is the wrong answer, and where in the book the obligations live. (You are answering as a manager, not as a lawyer — say where the lawyer's job starts.)
39. You cannot afford the whole \$19,716 retention bundle in year one. You have \$8,000. Choose your levers, defend the choice in terms of the separations each prevents, and state explicitly what you are choosing not to buy and what you expect that to cost.
40. An operator argues that predictable schedules are a luxury for restaurants with stable volume, and that a first-year independent genuinely cannot know its covers two weeks out. Steelman the argument. Then answer it — including what you would actually do in month three, when the forecast is worthless.
Business Plan extension
41. † Write the Culture & Retention section of the Bellwether business plan, in no more than 900 words. It must contain: the pre-shift structure with its annual cost and its cost per cover; the retention levers with prices and the separations each targets; the promotion ladder with the two empty rungs named; the delegation schedule with dates; and an honest paragraph on what the section does not settle. Do not resolve the labor gap — state it.
42. Bellwether's labor model is already \$70,461 over plan (Chapter 19) and this chapter adds \$19,741 of culture spending plus \$12,376 of pre-shift. Write the one-page memo the partners would put in front of themselves, laying out the three ways the gap can close — menu, price, or covers — and what each one would cost the concept. State which one you would recommend and why. Do not speculate about outside financing; this is an internal memo.